Fundamental Truth

I just realised a fundamental truth that has somehow eluded me until now, and it is this: At any given time, there is a limited amount of money in the world*. Meaning that if I want money, I need to get it from someone else. There are several ways of going about this. There are people who try to get a few people with a lot of money to give them some, particularly at the same time as the people who they are getting money from are getting money from other people. These include the professionals of this world - lawyers, accountants, engineers. There are people who try to get lots of people with a little bit of money to give them some, particularly at the same time as the people who they are getting money from are getting enjoyment. These include the retailers of this world, the coffee shops, the supermarkets, the door to door salesmen. There are people who try to get people with a little bit more money to give them a little bit more, and end up also getting people who don't have quite enough money to give them a little bit more, particularly at the same time as the people who they are getting money from are living some kind of dream. These are the luxury good suppliers, the car manufacturers, the fancy restaurants, the brand label clothing retailers, the niche marketers, the addiction sellers. There are people who try to be everything to everyone, and often those people fail (apparently). There are also people who tell people lies in order to get money from those people, and often those people end up in gaol, or incredibly wealthy, or both. And then there are people who don't try to get people to give them money, and wait for people to come to them to give them money. The problem with these people is that it is fundamentally difficult to convince someone that you and they will both get more happiness by them giving you their money, since people will generally feel their own emotions more strongly than yours. It takes effort to do this. Sometimes the effort is not worth the yield. But often it is, and you just don't realise it because you missed something, like the fundamental truth that there is a limited amount of money.

* Let's keep on the side the idea of "printing money" (which governments can apparently do but not really) and "creating wealth", which I'm not even sure if it exists (probably it does but it's difficult to sort the truth from the propaganda).